Taking in Grandpa's House

Observing from a child's mind, I sit quietly on a pile of sheepskin rugs. I can hear his footsteps, no changes in the impassive rhythm. One foot taps on the ground, and then after a pause, the second follows. It is slower, attached to a metal hip. One more moment and I hear his cane scratch the warm hardwood floor.

Grandpa’s houses have always been hot and small. No pictures of family or his seven children line his shelves, but countless bottles of alcohol litter all surfaces, spreading a weighted, impersonal smile across his face.

His apartment is full of delicate things, ready to break as soon as I touch them. I am scared to run my fingertips over the soft rug. So, I don’t move at all, looking instead out the grimy window. A pickup truck revs, driving slowly out of the cheap gas station across the street. In the itchy heat, sunburned and sweaty men congregate with beer. Chrome AR-15s are strapped across their shoulders, and as the men laugh and slap each other’s backs, the guns shiver dangerously.

I sneak a look behind me. With deep-set eyes, my grandfather surveys the room. He takes in the dusty heaps of books on the floor, the case of intricate wooden canes, his American flag folded neatly on the table. His expressionless face is intimidating. No speck of house dust dares to blow past his leather shoes, no resident stink bug is bold enough to rest on his wrinkled skin.

Momentarily, I feel the urge to sit next to him, but I am silent as he looks right through me. When a tuneless whistle springs from his lips, I allow myself to subtly shift my weight from one leg to the other.

His apartment is cramped, neglected, and impersonal. Did he live like this, alone and willfully ignorant while my father and his siblings squeezed hungry into a tiny SUV? But his closet is not full of loose-fitting Salvation Army jeans. Instead, his drawers consist of ironed checkered shirts and huge bronze belts. His worn-out cowboy hat hangs motionless from a hook on the doorway.

I glance again at his books, mostly collections of poetry. The Encyclopedia of Hypnotism, by Carla Emery, stares at me from across the room with swirly, deranged eyes. I’m surprised he owns this. Its frayed pages enclose frantic, paranoid tales of my grandmother's experiences with hypnosis. Her “true,” schizophrenia-induced stories are all about Grandfather—how evil and cunning he is.

I suddenly want my dad to come back. He is buying eggs, leaving me alone in this smothering house with Aunt Becca and my grandfather. I am scared of Becca. She tells me disturbing stories: biting into a strawberry only for millions of tiny bugs to crawl out of it, spirits telling her to go to Alaska, cameras hidden underneath the beds.

The soft sheepskin rug grows cold underneath my clammy fingers. I am nervous. I want to leave Idaho City and go back to New York. The wooden floors seem to bend under me, each plank humming with resentment, fear, and confusion.

I need to hide in the thick black curtains behind me, to get away from the closed bedroom doors and the sour smell of homemade bread, going stale on the fingerprint- smudged countertop. I cannot take the cross above the door, the water-marked bible shoved under a chair’s rickety leg. The bulbous glass eyes of a taxidermy deer dig holes into the back of my head. I frantically need to escape the radio silence emanating from the soiled and dim corner where my grandfather sits.

I hear a heavy and sudden knock on the door; my dad is back. I scramble by my grandfather in his heavy chair, past Becca sitting stoic on the couch. I rush past the ancient desk, cluttered with medication and little bottles of concentrated cannabis. I knock over a stack of poetry books and leap, relieved, into my father's arms.

As I help him put away the groceries in the tiny fridge, I see the way he smiles at my aunt and grandfather, moving closer to the silent figures, desperately and jovially chattering about normal things. I know we will be here for another week—we don’t get invited that often.